Christopher Hitchens and United Airlines’ Million-Miler Club
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 08.04.10 | 12:26 PM ET
Christopher Hitchens’ touching piece about his battle with cancer in the latest Vanity Fair notes that he learned of the cancer after he reached a couple of milestones, including one on United Airlines:
Of course my book hit the best-seller list on the day that I received the grimmest of news bulletins, and for that matter the last flight I took as a healthy-feeling person (to a fine, big audience at the Chicago Book Fair) was the one that made me a million-miler on United Airlines, with a lifetime of free upgrades to look forward to. But irony is my business and I just can’t see any ironies here: would it be less poignant to get cancer on the day that my memoirs were remaindered as a box-office turkey, or that I was bounced from a coach-class flight and left on the tarmac? To the dumb question “Why me?” the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?
Here’s hoping Hitchens is around to write more best-sellers—and to enjoy many years of those free United upgrades.
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
